MMO

BLADE & SOUL HAS MADE some headway since its North American launch in January. Less than three months after coming , NCSOFT’s massively multiplayer online game has attracted more than 2 million new players who have made accounts to explore the rich Far East-inspired world.

Part of the reason for the free-to-play role-playing game’s success is that the publisher has pushed out a steady stream of content. Its Rising Waters update came out three weeks after launch and the team has added two epic level dungeons and a heroic instance later. NCSOFT even added a new warlock class.Continue Reading →

WHEN MENTIONING massively multiplayer online games, World of Warcraft or Eve Online immediately comes to mind. They’re either high fantasy or complex sci-fi worlds, places with deep lore and environments that players end up lost in. There are dozens of games like this, but the genre can offer much more than swords and sorcery.

Bandai Namco is taking the MMO formula and putting a fresh slant on it with the upcoming free-to-play online title Winning Putt. It takes elements from that genre and mixes in ideas from role-playing games and action titles and folds it into a golfing game. The concept seems like it would be an awkward combination like a hummus-covered jelly-filled doughnut, but somehow the developers manage to make Winning Putt seamlessly work.Continue Reading →

Bossa Studios made a name for itself with Surgeon Simulator and I am Bread. Those titles found an audience with their quirky gameplay mechanics and unusual premises. They’re games with a distinct personality. For a follow-up, the developers have a more ambitious project. The team is building an MMO, and like its other titles, it has a unique take on the genre.

“When I was younger I played WindWaker and Skies of Arcadia,” said game designer Luke Williams. “I liked in Windwaker how you can see out and travel across the distance. I liked the idea of floating islands in Skies of Arcadia.”

Bossa Studios upcoming project combines those ideas in Worlds Adrift. Players are essentially sky pirates who are exploring a world full of floating islands. As the mythology goes, a civilization overmined its Atlas stones, a levitating mineral, and turned the planet into a series of hovering locales. Players have to venture across these aerial archipelagos and look for remnants and ruins of this lost society.Continue Reading →

After more than a year, big changes are in store for WildStar. At an event this month, I sat down with Product Director Mike Donatelli and Creative Director Chad Moore as the outlined the progression of the sci-fi MMO. They went through the mystery of Genesis Prime, the Protogames Initiative and Invasion: Nexus. They discussed how players’ feedback has led them to make the game more fun and less grindy, improve the type of loot players earn and invest in the narrative and grow the game.

But the biggest disruption will come this fall when the massively multiplayer online game goes free to play. Much like Star Wars: The Old Republic before it, WildStar is shifting its approach. “We want everyone to play” it, said Donatelli. The change won’t happen overnight though. “It’ll transition to a free-to-play game.”

When the developers talk free to play, they mean everything. Players can access all areas and missions. They can all hit level 50. Despite the change in how the game is funded, Donatelli assures players that the project will still be triple-A quality. As for those who are already subscribing, they’ll be able to continue to pay for the service and get several perks. They’ll gain a special membership that provides several “convenience bonuses and enhancements to XP, crafting, currency, item drops and reputation.”Continue Reading →

Blade & Soul is one of the most popular MMOs in the world, but you probably haven’t heard about it. Released in Asia in 2012, the massively multiplayer online game is different from most titles in the genre because of its martial arts theme and the fast-twitch combat that lies at the heart of the gameplay.

Unlike Western role-playing games that often feature Medieval-style swords and sorcerers, Blade & Soul is a story-driven epic inspired by the mythology of Asia. The world features vertigo-inducing verticality with steep hills and deep valleys. It’s the type of terrain you’d see in Guilin, China. Hammering this aesthetic home, the game s pushed along by a Wuxia storyline.

Players create a character from one of four races: the human Jin, the massive Gon, the small and adorable Lyn or the elegant Yun. There are also six classes to pick from — blademaster, kung fu master, assassin, destroyer, summoner and force master. Once players choose their setup, they’re thrown into the martial arts world where their village is torched. A mysterious woman, Jinsoyun, destroyed the player’s home in order to steal a special sword.Continue Reading →

Google’s Niantic Labs specializes in video games that revolve around the real world. It’s a heady space that mixes elements of massively multiplayer online experiences and augmented reality games. Ingress was the first example. It was a science fiction title that pits two factions — The Enlightened and The Resistance — against each other as they vied for real-life landmarks that contain portals.

The core gameplay concept was fine. It lured gamers outside, where they used the GPS on their mobile phones to locate important touchstones and battle rival factions for them. The only issue I had with it is that the systems were too complex and the fiction too complicated. There was a lot to digest and learn.

With Niantic’s upcoming project, Endgame: Proving Ground, the developers aim to fix at least one of those problems. They are teaming up with authors James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton whose novel Endgame: The Calling was released in October. The book, the first of three in the works, has been optioned to be a film. This sets up the franchise to be a transmedia project with different hooks into the universe and the mobile game is going to be one doorway into that.

More than a year after essentially getting a redo, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is set to launch its first major expansion. Coming June 23, the content explores the bloody thousand-year conflict between Ishgard and Dravania. The expansion will boast massive new areas and new job-specific armor. That’s on top of a new end-game raid dungeon that fans of the series will recognize: Alexander. The creature is usually a summon but in the massively multiplayer online game, it will be stage that fans explore piece by piece.

That’s a ton of fresh content but the more fascinating features were the new flying mounts, new race (the Aur Ra) and the new jobs (Dark Knight, Astrologian and Machinist). Let’s take a look at these three new additions, starting with the new dragonlike species called the Aur Ra. The group ties in nicely with the expansion’s focus, which features armored dragoons who battle flying dragons. Director Naoki Yoshida said the team looked at what characteristics were missing from the roster and found that there was a need for another demihuman-type race. The group features big burly males with horns around their faces and more diminutive and lithe females. There are scales covering parts of their skin and they have tails. They remind me of Dragon Age’s Qunari at times.

Those who want to try out the new race can do so even if they have a character they’ve been working on for months. Certain editions of the game will include a Fantasia potion that will let players change the race of an already established character.

It’s not every day that a mass multiplayer online game gets a do-over, but that’s what happened over the past 33 months with Final Fantasy XIV. An effort like that is unprecedented, but it was sparked by an underwhelming debut in 2010. Dubbed A Realm Reborn, the reboot has gained traction since its re-release last year, becoming the largest MMO of its kind coming out of Japan. It’s also gotten a better reception.

Now the game is coming to the PlayStation 4. I had a chance to check it out earlier this month. Here are a few quick thoughts:

Although it’s made a name for itself recently among the PC crowd, Wargaming.net has been a game developer that’s been around for the past 15 years. A studio that originally worked on strategy games, the developer enjoyed a meteoric rise based on the success of World of Tanks.

The free-to-play MMO has caught on with 70 million players, and Wargaming.net is expanding with plans for World of Warships and World of Warplanes. The former is still in development but the latter is close to a release. The flying game been in beta for what seems like forever, but now, World of Warplanes is set to launch globally Nov. 12 and 13.

I had a chance to speak with Gareth Luke, Wargaming.net’s senior producer, about the company’s plans for the future at a recent San Francisco event. He offered details on World of Warplanes, World of Tanks on the Xbox 360 and how the company is going to eventually combine the trilogy of games.

The problem with MMOs is that I never have time to play them. Like long-term relationships, it’s a commitment. Players have to invest several hours each day in front of a computer to chat with friends, gain experience points and go adventuring. It’s almost like leading a second life and that can be hard to keep up when you’re already struggling with the first one.

But there is a way to distill the best parts of the MMO — the social features, the community, addictive gameplay — and it seems as though Machine Zone has figured it out. The early iOS developer has been working on an MMO for iPhone and iPad for the past 19 months, and today, it’s going live in the U.S. You can download it here.

Game of War: Fire Age is a huge game that’s a bit of Civilization mixed with real-time strategy, Warcraft 3 and everything in between. It’s an MMO that lets players create a nation and build that empire in a persistent world that’s home to thousands of other friends and foes who control their own countries.